So. Back in early November I had to go to the ER. I was bringing in my green bin from the curb at 7:30 AM (pitch dark), and tripped over a branch that had fallen from my neighbor's tree.
My right knee hit the concrete. My left hand took the rest of the impact and saved my beautiful face and gorgeous brain. I ended up rolling over onto my ass, and it was about 10 minutes before I could even get up off the ground and get back to the house. Try getting up when opposite limbs are completely fucked. It's like Twister, only with way more pain.
My husband drove me to a full service emergency room at a local acute care clinic. Turned out I had a chip from my patella floating around inside my knee joint, and a radial head fracture of my elbow with significant soft tissue injury.
The next week or so was really fun. But that's not what I'm writing about here.
What I'm writing about is my ER visit. Before you even get to triage, you get COVID screening. Do you have any symptoms? Have you travelled out of the province or country in the last 14 days? Have you been in contact with anyone you know is COVID+? Are you vaccinated?
For me, it was nope, nope, nope and nope.
For the record, I'm not vaccinated because I caught the OG (original gangster) back in late January of 2020. I had some serious fallout from it. Long lasting cardiovascular and pulmonary injury. Over time, looking at the evidence in its totality, I decided that what little additional benefit vaccination might provide me was not worth the risk of experiencing that again. I'm satisfied with my natural, adaptive immunity.
So, nope, nope, nope and nope. And then my temperature check came out fine.
And they stuck me in the ER's COVID isolation room. By isolation, I don't mean they stuck me in a room all by myself. They stuck me in an enclosed space with COVID+ patients.
They didn't test me to see if I had COVID. All they knew was that I was unvaccinated.
This didn't particularly alarm me. If I was unfamiliar with the data, it might have, and I'd have noticed it right then and there. But I was in excruciating pain and was confident that my natural adaptive immunity would protect me, so it kind of went under my radar.
Four hours later, after all my x-rays were taken, the doctor comes in and asks if I'd be willing to be vaccinated. I said no. She asks, "are you willing to have a conversation about it?" I said no.
And then like an automaton, she starts a conversation about it. I told her I was fine with my natural immunity, since studies had shown it's 6 to 13 times more protective than vaccination alone. She tells me no, that's not true. The delta variant, she says. Also, she says, the CDC published a study proving natural immunity was inferior to vaccination. Which makes no sense at all. There is no universe in which, all other things being equal, vaccination is more protective than previous infection.
I kept refusing. So then she asks my husband (who was sitting there next to my bed, also unvaccinated, 8 feet away from a COVID+ patient) if he'd be willing to get vaccinated.
We tell her he can't because he has chemical sensitivities that can send him into anaphylaxis. The inactive ingredients could be dangerous to him. Moderna, for instance, has acetic acid, and that's one of his triggers.
She immediately changes tactics and tries to guilt me into getting vaccinated. "Don't you want to protect your husband? He CAN'T get vaccinated, so it's up to you to not get infected and expose him."
I was like, "bitch, please. We've both had it. Every study suggests that we're very unlikely to get it again, and that if we do, with very few exceptions, our reinfections will be milder than the original. I'm a housewife. He works from home. It's not like we're attending sports events where we tongue kiss strangers."
Eventually, she gave up and I took a tetanus booster because I'd fallen outdoors and it broke the skin.
It wasn't until recently that the natural versus vaccine immunity thing left my head and I really thought about what they'd done.
According to this doctor, I was extremely vulnerable to infection and severe outcomes because I was unvaccinated. Yet without ever testing me to see if I had COVID and with no indication that I did have COVID, they stuck me in an enclosed space with COVID+ patients.
They intentionally exposed a supposedly vulnerable person to COVID.
Then she tried to pressure me to get vaccinated. Even though it takes two weeks after your first dose before you have any level of protection. What good was getting vaccinated after spending 4 to 5 hours exposed to COVID going to do me at that point?
Then she tried to guilt me into getting vaccinated to protect my husband, even though they allowed his unvaccinated ass to sit with me for hours in an enclosed space with COVID+ patients.
If they cared about me avoiding contracting COVID as an unvaccinated person, why would they have stuck my unvaccinated ass in the COVID room? Why would they have let my husband's unvaccinated ass sit with me in the COVID room?
Why would they have tried to talk me into getting vaccinated WAY too late for it to prevent me from becoming infected?
For that matter, why would't they have tested me to see if I had COVID before sticking me in with COVID+ patients?
And this is policy. It wasn't a fluke. Because my husband was stuck in the ER COVID isolation room at a different hospital earlier in 2021. He had no COVID symptoms or indicators. He as just unvaccinated. They stuck him 8 feet away from some guy who was coughing up a lung. He'd eaten something that wasn't kosher, and had gone into anaphylaxis. They didn't test him for COVD, either.
Last I checked, it was "first, do no harm."
Why are our policies intentionally exposing allegedly vulnerable unvaccinated people who have no indications of COVID to COVID?
How does this make any sense at all?
You can say, "well, it's your fault because you weren't vaccinated." And again, I wasn't worried about me or my husband getting COVID because we'd already had it.
But this doctor was literally trying to tell me that natural immunity doesn't exist, only vaccination can protect you. And yet as a matter of policy, they intentionally exposed us both. For hours on end.
Because we were unvaccinated.
